In November 2023, a BU Today opinion piece posed a pertinent question: “Why are we so obsessed with serial killers?” Three Boston University-affiliated experts weighed in on the topic, one that came into focus after police arrested Rex Heuermann, a man accused of killing three woman whose bodies were found on Long Island’s Gilgo Beach more than a decade earlier. The true crime genre holds an interesting place in American society: it is the most popular podcasting genre. Some scholars posit that because American media is poised to creating celebrity and then sustaining, this combines with the media saturation of true crime stories, and results in serial killers achieving celebrity status. Joshua Chaplinsky’s Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is an examination of just that—the celebrity status serial killers gain through media coverage and the households in which such killers become, eerily enough, well-loved figures. However, Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is not the normal true crime novel. Its epistolary form—shaped through letters written to the novel’s main character—makes it experimental and even more provocative than the questions the novel probes about the human psyche and American culture’s thirst for violence.
The main character, Pennsylvania native Jonas Williker, brutalized his way into the pantheon of serial killers during the early 2000s. Across five states, he killed and raped 23 women in ways that would make even Hannibal Lecter blush. His unique calling card—a torn piece of purple fabric left on or inside his victims’ bodies—earned him the nickname the Purple Satin Killer. After his arrest, Williker attained celebrity status despite his imprisonment. Hundreds of letters written by ministers’ daughters, amateur true crime sleuths, family members, murder memorabilia collectors, lonely women, and former childhood acquaintances flood into Williker’s hands. His life in prison, his trial, his death sentence, and his eventual execution are all on public display. Despite this, however, it is the letters he receives from those who adore him and those who hate him that reveal more about his depraved mind and the collective American psyche than any headline or news article could offer.
Most Williker’s admirers are, frighteningly enough, women. One woman, Ginny, is a lonely divorcee who works part-time and mothers two special needs children she adopted. Another, Stacie Satin, is a pornography star whose letters reveal her desire to be physically mutilated in the same manner as Williker’s victims—all in pursuit of an orgasm. Another is, Candace, a PhD candidate who had a fatherless childhood and is researching hybristophilia—the phenomenon of an individual being sexually aroused by a criminal offender—and eventually marries Jonas during his imprisonment. Williker’s own mother, Judith, also contributes to the postal frenzy. The inclusion of her letters in the collection provides an intimate exploration of denial by not fixating on “the morbid details” because it’s “not healthy,” as she explains in one of the initial letters. These women stand in stark juxtaposition to real women in American society who follow true crime obsessively for another reason—to protect themselves. According to the November 2023 BU article, 70% of true crime consumers are “‘heterosexually-partnered college-aged women ages 18 to 34 years old,’” and as one young woman shared, she received an answer of “‘safety and security,’” as well as lessons on “‘red flag’” behavior—ultimately transforming the genre into a form of preventive education.
Letters to the Purple Satin Killers also testifies to another strange phenomenon that emerges due to true crime’s influence: the formation of community. From jurors to admirers, from online forums to support groups from violent offenders, a multitude of groups and interconnections are depicted in the letters Williker receives. One juror, Meredith Wu, gains a bit of celebrity status herself after she begins discussing the affairs, the arguments, and the other drama which dominated the jurors’ lives as they deliberated Williker’s case. Judith joins a support group for violent offenders, only to discover that the group’s organizer lays no claim to familial ties to a violent offender and was secretly podcasting her discussion with Judith to the world. True crime online forums debate and deliberate the motives behind the Purple Satin Killer’s murders. When Williker begins paying a private business that helps inmates connect with outside world via social media, his poetry goes viral and forum viewers speculate about the messages and clues Williker might be sending via his verses. Strangely enough, very few of the collected letters express animosity or hatred. Williker receives the occasional feces-smeared letter, and a law enforcement officer who once suspected Williker of suspicious behavior frequently writes the inmate. A minister’s young daughter frequently pleads with Williker to accept Christ’s salvation in order to spare himself eternal damnation, and a former girlfriend eventually recognizes the warning signs in their relationship that she did not see during their time together.
Another—albeit small—group forms in Letters to the Purple Satin Killer: the capitalists. Primarily, the novel’s exploration of capitalism occur through two characters determined to make money on memorabilia Williker gives them. The two are rivals, filling their letters to Williker with vitriol and gossip about one another in an effort to sway him to provide one and not the other with the memorabilia. Larry Hostetler, owner and proprietor of Murdertown, USA prides himself on hosting “one of the largest public inventories of muderabilia.” He also claims that Murdertown, USA’s “mission is to provide a safe space for the discerning true crime aficionado to indulge in their satisfaction with the darker side of life.” For some, the inclusion of an entity like Murdertown, USA—and specifically Hostetler’s description of it—might add a bit of dark humor to the novel. While it may seem for some the stuff of fiction that such an entity exists, the reality is that such businesses do, in fact, prevail. Nu-metal band Korn’s front man Jonathan Davis once prided himself on having a large collection serial killer memorabilia but has since sold it, claiming the collection brought negativity into his home. Collectors like Davis acquire murderabilia from places like SerialKillersInk.net. Collectors’ fascination with muderabilia, as well as the lucrative businesses thriving on murderabilia sales, pose another pertinent question to society: Is it ethical or appropriate to purchase and collect memorabilia? Nonetheless, this is only a small focus in the novel, but it is important to recognize, especially since even the US government has participated in auctioning murderabilia—items that once belonged to the Unibomber—and making a lucrative profit.
As more and more people take an interest in true crime, more and more conversations surface about whether or not the serial killer fascination overtaking the American psyche contributes to a certain toxicity within society. Some scholars suggest that rather than focusing on and glorifying the serial killers themselves, the narrative should shift and instead focus on the victims’ and their families’ narratives. In some ways, Letters to the Purple Satin Killer accomplishes this by including a few letters written by those related to the victims. One of the letters is from Susan Phillips, the daughter of one of his victims. Phillips’ letter opens with the heartbreaking question, “Why did you take my mother from me?” Phillips’ missive, perhaps more so than any other letter, humanizes the emotional and psychological aftermath faced by murder victims’ families.
Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is a fascinating novel because of its structure and its theme. It probes the human psyche’s darkest corners, ultimately leading us to learn a little about our own comfort zones and psychological boundaries. Some letters leave us nauseated and questioning whether or not we should continue to read; others have us examining empathy in all its forms. Needless to say, this page-turner will keep you awake all night—whether or not you are actually reading the book.
Letters to the Purple Satin Killer, by Joshua Chaplinsky. CLASH Books, August 2024. 340 pages. $21.95, paper.
Nicole Yurcaba (Нікола Юрцаба) is a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. A poet and essayist, her poems and reviews have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, New Eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University, and is the Humanities Coordinator at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College. She also serves as a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Southern Review of Books.
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
Heavy Feather Review 